Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday June 19, 2010 @12:06AM
from the cool-little-houses dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe kicked off today in Madrid, Spain, with a stunning array of solar-powered prefab homes. Seventeen teams from around the globe are battling it out in the center of the city to see who has the most efficient solar-powered and eco-friendly house. Just as in the competition in Washington DC, the teams will be graded on minimal energy use, innovative architecture and engineering, sustainability, and more. Check out these exclusive photos from the event for a first look at the most exciting houses in this year's competition."

Please keep you limbs inside the train at all times. Do not attempt to open the doors until the train has come to a complete halt at the station platform.

A reminder that the Black Mesa Hazard Course decathlon will commence this evening at 1900 hours in the Level Three facility. The semi-finals for high security personnel will be announced in a separate secure access transmission. Remember, more lives than your own may depend on your fitness. Do you have a friend or relative who make a valuable addition t

You want to know which design is more efficient? You need to monitor the mining, refining, shipping, construction and maintenance for the next 20+ years (or until we have fusion power, which largely moots the problem). Judging efficiency based on a sample of a couple of days is like measuring tails and extrapolating that cats and elephants must be about the same size.

I'm sorry. Maybe they should just scrap the competition then. It's clearly a total waste and provides no true innovation or inspiration for its corporate sponsors and/or onlookers.

Anytime a scientific story gets posted to slashdot, what annoys me most is when commentors take on the annoying stance of impatiently asking why it isn't functional immediately. It's ridiculous. So I suppose all modern inventions were developed overnight. The first computers were core i7's, right? It's not like we ever started out

That's like saying why take on big oil in the first place with things like solar and wind energy. The architecture industry has little control over the construction, shipping, mining, maintenance and regulatory industries, and little help from governments either. The best we can do now is just make a product that IS a little better and then put it on the market. In the end it is really up to the consumer and how guilty they feel about the fact that their TV (or computer) power usage could operate three or

A few days ago my buddy emailed me with some infographic [tumblr.com] about "how few" solar panels it would take to power the entire planet. Now this. I'll agree there's money to be made in Solar, and it's green(ish), but has anyone else noticed just a huge marketing push in the last few weeks for solar? I guess it makes more sense to market solar energy during the summer (in the northern hemisphere) but why now? It's convenient that the BP oil spill is happening now, but this sort of thing takes lots of perpetration, time and money. I'm guessing it's in response to the Cape Wind project [wikipedia.org] finally being approved? Anyone have any more info on why NOW they're doing such a large marketing push for solar? Is wind that big of a threat to solar?

It's interesting that they're doing this in Spain, where wind support is popular and has long had government support, with several large installations already.

Anyone have any more info on why NOW they're doing such a large marketing push for solar? Is wind that big of a threat to solar?

It's obvious that it's all about the BP spill. People are saying "what can we do to stop this from happening again?" The best answer is "stop offshore drilling" but it's not realistic unless we reduce our dependence on oil.

It's not obvious this contest is a direct result of Deep Water oil rig. I'm pretty sure they came up with the contest, had the design firms design and then construct and transport the houses to their current location long before Deep Water self destructed. For solar companies, Deep Water is just a happy coincidence. Unless... *dons tin foil hat*

Solar had huge government support in Spain too. It's only the dire economic situation the country's in which has put a stop to the government subsidising solar panels on all new commercial construction.

The thing is that solar companies are probably the only ones where I don’t mind a marketing push.Although I prefer the combination of solar thermal power plants and pumped-storage hydroelectricity (or other good storage forms) for the night, interconnected with HVDC lines.

It’s really true that with 400x400 km of those power plants (not counting the hydros) you could power the entire world. Which is especially great for the poor but sunny countries, since those power plants are dead cheap, simple

I like the bamboo one and HOUSE because form seems to follow function and the end results don't look like the more silly entries in a clothing fashion show or like mobile homes accessorized with cars on cinder blocks and beer gutted rednecks.

However houses are for suburbia and suburbia is a stupid idea because it increases commute distances and wastes land. The lack of shared walls wastes materials and reduces energy efficiency.

IMO, a contest for high-rise building and urban designs would be more interesti